Domain: memphis.edu
Stories and comments across the archive that link to memphis.edu.
Comments · 16
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Re:Other Motivation?
"And if it does, it couldn't possibly get FCC approval."
That doesn't follow. The FCC has a history of being pressed into decisions going back to the obsoleting of the old (pre-WW2) FM band. That one also obsoleted a lot of old gear.
https://umdrive.memphis.edu/mbensman/public/stat40.html
That was also done at the behest of corporate interests.
I know you don't like Grassley, but his presence on this issue is largely beside the point. You need to check out the technical background on this one, Ratzo.
There are real technical questions about Lightsquared's proposal.
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Re:Have to keep watching
There is an area in the North Dakota / Montana area that has relatively high seismic activity. There are no local networks in that area, though, because nobody lives there, so we don't see all of the small ones that happen. I'm not all that familiar with the area, but that's what I've heard. Source: from my professors--I'm a seismology grad student.
To see how a local network can affect the amount of earthquakes you're seeing, compare the USGS's earthquake map of the New Madrid Seismic Zone to CERI's map.
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The Wonderful Process of Academic Publishing
LATEX with the "apa.cls" class installed would be an excellent start: http://www.ilsp.gr/homepages/protopapas/pdf/Protopapas_2007_Eutypon.pdf To frame your argument, you would want use: http://scholar.google.com/ to look for (free) electronically accessible research (there is plenty) that supports, frames, or possibly even discredits your argument or conclusion. Mostly avoid first-person, and minimize (if not outright eliminate) all passive-voice. If you want a computer's opinion on the quality of your writing try the COHmetrix system I use for linguistic research: http://cohmetrix.memphis.edu/cohmetrixpr/index.html Pay attention to the Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid reading level. High numbers are good on these scores, but numbers that are too high can mean the document is difficult to read. Find a decent publication and prepare to be rejected 8 or so times, each time though you will make changes that make it increasingly more likely to be published. This isn't the entire process, but it's some of the highlights. I currently do this exact process for a living (I mostly edit other peoples work to make their papers APA 5 or 6 compliant), it's brutal, but it's entirely worth the trouble.
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Re:More Mars color BS
I will have to wait to look at actual histograms until I get home from work, but it sounds to me like you don't understand image histograms. The blue and green channels can be biased towards the dark end either because someone darkened those channels (which typically results in identifiable artifacts in those channels...spikes or gaps in the histogram), or because there's simply not a lot in the image that is bright in those channels. This is the reason why NASA has the color calibration targets. It's sort of like the white balance cards that pro-photographers often use here on earth.
Anybody with GIMP or Photoshop and an ordinary digital camera can verify this by shooting scenes dominated by one color or another. Alternately, you can find examples on the web (note that even in the correct version, the red channel is much brighter because the target contains more red).
Of course, if you wanted to get serious about it, you could actually get a telescope and look at Mars. Or better yet, you can learn why Mars is red and understand that this is nothing absurd or unprecedented. -
goog "cognitive science research software"
http://cognitrn.psych.indiana.edu/rgoldsto/labware.html
http://ccrg.cs.memphis.edu/projects.html
http://www.opencog.org/wiki/Main_Page
helps to know what you're looking for -
Reminds me of AgentSheets
Not only Alice, but AgentSheets as well, which also features a visual programming approach.
http://www.agentsheets.com/
Disclaimer: In 2004-6 I worked as a 'Teaching Fellow' as part of an NSF funded grant providing computer science resources in local high schools. [ http://triplets.cs.memphis.edu/ ] As part of that work we introduced AgentSheets into several classrooms. -
Re:Me(m)p(h)is
Slight correction. The ancient Egyptian city was also spelled 'Memphis'. some references to back this up:
http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/h utchinson/m0002259.html
http://www.memphis.edu/egypt/main.html> -
Don't get me started . . .
I am, on the other hand, the king of email:
I keep the "Automatically check mail messages for misspellings before sending" box checked in Lotus Notes.
One day last week I sent a 263-word email with a Flesch Reading Ease score of 54.2 and a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 9.0.
Later that day, I sent one with 522 words and scores of 41 and 10.5, respectively!
While I realize the weaknesses in these statistics, my point is: you have to read well to appreciate my emails!
None of this stuff like my mom sends, "WHEN ARE YOU COMINGG FOR CHRISTMAS."
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Re:A reverse scenario
Not terribly analogous, but here's a similar story about Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater.
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Re:First real relational database
I concur. If dBase II can be said to be relational, then any data persistence mechanism is too. Some other candidates beyond ISAM (non-exhaustive list):
http://www.amherst.edu/~ermace/sth/photos.html
http://www.mkzdk.org/carnac/guiden.html
http://www.memphis.edu/egypt/giza.htm
http://www.crystalinks.com/chinawall.html
http://archaeology.la.asu.edu/teo/intro/sun.htm -
Predictions improved
I predict that:
- A quake of at least 6.5R will hit Southern California before September 3, 2004.
- Arnold Swarzenegger will call out the National Guard and save the day, leading to a Constitutional Amendment declaring him "High Overlord of Der Stat en Kalifehrnzie".
- The Colorado river will widen by 11 inches, which will result in parts of it becoming wet.
- Tonight, at some point, it will be dark. (my apologies to George Carlin)
I'll be more impressed if they can predict a quake on the less-active, but violent, New Madrid fault.
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Re:Scary:
MS Word has something similar. It can give you readability statistics such as the percentage of passive sentences, Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, Sentences per Paragraph, Words per Sentence, and Characters per Word.
Here is some information about readability formulas. -
Genius Gene has been found!
A remarkable number of people that are rated as geniuses have/had dyslexia
examples are:
Leonardo DaVinci
Michael Faraday
Thomas Edison
and more here.
I wonder if they could poke the genius bit on but leave the learning difficulty out, or perhaps the different way of learning that dyslexics have makes a far better connected brain than us normal saps have
Info about the GIFT of dyslexia -
Re:What about the XB54?
Theres quite a few links about it. This plasma thing is not that hard to do. It is definitely less technoligically advanced than scramjets. Also, SCRAMJETS would probably use plasma drag reduction too. It is not that hard to do. Plasma shieding can be accomplished with a glorified welder's plasma torch.
Links:
Sandia article
This article provides some good info on plasma drag reduction as well as other hypersonic aircraft subjects.
A Russian plasma page. -
Re:wee bit 'o whoring:Thanks to chrisatslashdot, memphis.edu has a mirror; just in case, though -- here is the final chapter, told by Eric W. Weisstein:
Settling the Case
We eventually concluded that there was no real business discussion possible. CRC was simply incapable of listening to or evaluating an actual business proposal. So we weighed the costs of continued litigation against the costs of giving CRC some of the cash for which it appeared so hungry. The cash approach won.
In addition to its "instant win," CRC will be paid annually for books they don't sell, according to a formula that both sides have accepted--although we continue to believe that any past or future failure to achieve projected sales is far more plausibly attributed to CRC's abysmal marketing efforts than to any abuse of the web site by people who want to have and hold snapshots of its contents. But in this life we do what we have to do--and what we are willing to do.
There are a few other consequences of the settlement which are of interest to MathWorld readers. The first is that a copyright statement "© 1999 CRC Press LLC" (in addition of the © 1999-2001 Wolfram Research, Inc. notice) now appears at the bottom of MathWorld entries that have a corresponding article in CRC's printed shapshot. Despite the fact the I (or volunteer contributors) wrote these entries, that CRC Press did nothing to support their creation or the creation of the web site in which they appear, and the fact that they existed in the website long before they ever appeared in the printed version, the tail has truly come to wave this dog, and this copyright statement will henceforth be a constant reminder of this fact.
Another important change is that, as part of the settlement agreement, CRC Press will now be given permission to create editions of the printed book based on future snapshots of the website. As a result, CRC insisted that broad reproduction rights to all contributed material be secured. Furthermore, if we are not able to secure such rights, then Wolfram Research and I, at our own expense, must rewrite the entries in question from scratch for CRC to reproduce. This makes it extremely difficult for us to include any new contributed material on the website unless we first secure permissions using CRC's boilerplate permissions form. This form is endorsed by neither Wolfram Research nor myself, but as part of the settlement agreement, we are required to ask contributors to sign it. Since our goal is and always has been to provide your contributions on-line to the worldwide math community, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or imposition this CRC-mandated form may cause you.
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Boycott CRC
Check out Eric Weisstein's ordeal.
There's a mirror here. My apologies, Eric
A short synonpsis might be: Eric spent from high school to present of his life creating this wonderful resource. One day he returns from lunch to find Sherif's Deputies waiting to serve him with a federal copyright violation lawsuit for publishing his work on the web. Now after more than a year of negotiations all of Mathworld belongs to CRC and Eric pays them so that he can continue working on it.
Print his story out and stick it in the CRC books of your local book stores.
Or contact CRC and tell them what you think.
CRC Press LLC Headquarters
2000 NW Corporate Blvd
Boca Raton,FL, USA 33431
Phone
1(800)272-7737 x6066
(561)994-0555
Fax -
1(800)374-3401
(561)989-9732